This is Part III in a series on Execute Commands on Multiple Linux or UNIX Servers Simultaneously. The full series is Part I, Part II, and Part III.

In third and final part of this series I will cover expect tool. Expect is a program that talks to other interactive programs according to a script. Expect is useful for running any program which requires interaction between the program and the user. For example

General syntax of multixterm:

multixterm -xc “command arg1 arg2” server1 server2… Multixterm creates multiple xterms that can be driven together or separately so that you can execute or run on multiple hosts/servers simultaneously. The following command line starts up two xterms using ssh to the hosts 192.168.1.16 and 192.168.1.11:

$ multixterm -xc "ssh root@%n" 192.168.1.11 192.168.1.16

Where,

-xc : The optional -xc argument indicates a command to be run in each named xterm (see -xn). With no -xc argument, the command is the current shell. This means you type command once and it get executed on both ssh hosts/servers.

ssh root@%n : ssh is a command to connect remote server with root user. This name will also be substituted for any %n in the command argument.

Debian Linux stores multixterm at /usr/share/doc/expect directory. You need to type commands in multixterm window itself (stdin window). Click on stdin window and type uptime or w command:For example when I typed the uptime and w command it looked like as follows:

See also:

Execute Commands on Multiple Linux or UNIX Servers: Part I and Part II